This invention relates to information management for Internet protocol (IP) packet transmission.
Data collection systems are used to collect information from network traffic flow on a network. These data collection systems are designed to capture one type of network traffic from one source type and deliver the data to one application type such as a billing application.
According to an aspect of the invention, a method for tracking network accounting records in an accounting process that collects and correlates information derived from network data includes producing a network accounting record that has an identifier that uniquely identifies the record within the accounting process with the identifier including a sequence number that specifies a sequence number for network accounting records that originate from the source device and determining when there is a break in the sequence numbers of network accounting records produced from the device. The method also includes requesting missing network accounting records when there is a break in the sequence.
One or more of the following advantage may be provided by one or more aspects of the invention.
The records produced in the accounting system have a sequence number that allows components that are in the next level to detect if there are missing records in a collection of records and can be used to give a sense of how often records are produced in a given time period. With this information being part of every record, an accounting process can determine a sense of the functional capabilities of the intermediate components and detect some aspects of the communication channel between components.